Analyzing Virtual Reality in Education: Advantages and Disadvantages

This literature review explores the advantages and disadvantages of using virtual reality (VR) in education. It highlights that VR helps in learning difficult concepts easily and keeps students engaged, citing studies that demonstrate improved learning outcomes and spatial visualization skills compared to traditional methods like PowerPoint presentations. The review also addresses short-term implications such as eye strain and headaches, as well as long-term implications related to technology improvement, affordability, and wider adoption in educational settings. The stakeholders identified include educators, students, gamers, and companies involved in exotic site views and virtual tripping. The paper references various academic sources to support its analysis of VR's role and potential in education.

Running head: VIRTUAL REALITY IN EDUCATION
Virtual Reality in Education
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1VIRTUAL REALITY IN EDUCATION
Discussion
The most advantage of using the virtual reality in education is that virtual reality helps in
learning difficult concepts easy to learn and students remain engaged and excited to learn new
stuff. 27 percent of the respondents have shared that the virtual reality makes the difficult
concepts to learn easily. At the same time, 25 percent of the respondent has responded that
virtual reality gets the student engaged and excited. Some of the major disadvantages of virtual
reality are that it causes brain damage or headaches, it is hard to manage virtual reality during
classes and virtual reality is difficult to implement and it is expensive as well. While it has been
found that females are more familiar with the usage of virtual reality in comparison to the males.
Considering the fact that the virtual gives a 3-Dimensional feel to each and every
environment without even visiting a specific place brings a sense of curiosity and engagement
within the students and the educators (Freina and Ott 2015). While at the same time the virtual
reality is still in the development stage which requires more polish and due to this, it has some
advantages. Virtual provides an engaged and immersive experience into a variety of areas like
the languages, humanities, science, engineering and maths. Studies conducted by Parong and
Mayer (2018), highlights that virtual reality provides and creative and immersive experience
rather than the PowerPoint presentation when a lesson on the human body was taught in class.
Also, a study by Fogarty, McCormick and El-Tawil (2017), have revealed that the students
become better in visualizing subjects or topics that require a spatial visualization. The students
were able to visualize the buckling modes properly after having the experience of virtual reality.
The short-term implications of the virtual reality include the eye-stain arising due to the normal
usage of the virtual reality headsets. The other short-term problem might lead to headaches
(Agocg.ac.uk 2018).

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The short term implication of the virtual reality technology pertains to the improvement
of the technology and at the same time making it affordable to the students. The developers of
this technology will emphasise on making the user experience more user friendly by making
software for easy integration and synchronization with the hardware of the virtual technology.
Short term implication will also include the benefits related to educational requirement. Software
can be developed that can be used to make a proper integration with the science subjects like
physiology, tourism, electronics and 3 dimensional visualizations. While the long term
implication of virtual reality will include changing the perception of this technology so that it can
be implemented widely in schools, colleges, higher studies and even in research. Changing the
perception will lead to the better adaption of the technology into the field of education
(Agocg.ac.uk 2018). The stakeholder is the educators, students, gamers, exotic site view and
tripping companies.

3VIRTUAL REALITY IN EDUCATION
References
Agocg.ac.uk, 2018. Health and Safety Issues associated with Virtual Reality - A Review of
Current Literature. [online] Agocg.ac.uk. Available at:
http://www.agocg.ac.uk/reports/virtual/37/37.pdf [Accessed 14 Nov. 2018].
Fogarty, J., McCormick, J. and El-Tawil, S., 2017. Improving Student Understanding of
Complex Spatial Arrangements with Virtual Reality. Journal of Professional Issues in
Engineering Education and Practice, 144(2), p.04017013.
Freina, L. and Ott, M., 2015. A Literature Review on Immersive Virtual Reality in Education:
State Of The Art and Perspectives. eLearning & Software for Education, (1).
Parong, J. and Mayer, R.E., 2018. Learning science in immersive virtual reality. Journal of
Educational Psychology. vol. 110, no.6, pp.785-797.